


Princess

by gedonelune-romance (brutalism)



Category: Shall We Date?: Wizardess Heart+
Genre: AU, F/M, Gen, Lulias, Other, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 05:13:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5444537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brutalism/pseuds/gedonelune-romance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luca Orlem finds his buddy as he finds all things: by unraveling the secrets no one else notices. Ellie Goldstein, however, is not so pleased to be unraveled.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Princess

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RobanCrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobanCrow/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Persona Mirror changes all lives it touches, but the youngest Goldstein child was changed more than most. Or, to put it another way: sometimes longing looks like love, but isn’t.

**Reflection** \- A Prologue

 

 

 

It was late and the guests had left, but all of us Goldsteins were still awake. My eldest brother, Louis, had brought home his girlfriend Elaine, and the family couldn’t resist staying up to talk.

Everyone sat clustered together at the kitchen table over a sundry of canapés, eating and laughing in the dim orange light of the floating lanterns; their limbs crossed in joyful tangles as they completed each other’s sentences. Father kept topping off everyone’s wine glasses with an ebullient flourish of the bottle, and Mother kept touching Elaine’s arm and murmuring, “you lovely girl,” as if she wasn’t quite sure Elaine was real.  

I wasn’t sure of that either. I had spent most of the night studying her over the rim of my drinking glass, nibbling at thin crackers topped with an assortment of seeds, sprouts, pickled onion and mascarpone cheese.

Elaine was not like any woman in our family. Her hair was fine and dark, and she wore a gauzy dress in periwinkle blue. When she laughed, it was a low sound, like the wind rushing over the sea. I noticed the way her fingers clutched delicately at the stem of her champagne glass, like she had plucked a flower fresh from the earth. Even Klaus was affected by her - he kept adjusting his glasses on his awkwardly lengthening thirteen-year-old nose, and every time she looked his way he blushed. I had never seen him act that way and didn’t know what to make of it.

I couldn’t understand what the adults were on about - something about the ministry, which was where all the adults worked - and so I tugged at my brother’s sleeve. “Klaus,” I whispered in his ear, “can’t we go to my room and talk?” He shook me off with an irritated elbow nudge. Later, he said.

And so I slipped away, seeking the quiet.

 

* * *

 

As usual, I ended up in front of my father’s study, halted not by propriety but by the pattern on the door itself. A twisting maze of dark, carved wood stretched from floor to ceiling, its whorls and curlicues inscrutable at first glance, but shifting into something more familiar the longer one looked. Father said there was nothing special about the door, that a person only saw what they wanted to see, but I knew better, of course; it was enchanted. This time it was telling the story of Cappara the lost goat.

With a lingering touch to the knob of wood that looked just like Cappara, I pushed the door open and snuck inside.

As soon as the door shut again, off came my dancing shoes - the ones Mother always insisted on but I hated because they always pinched so horribly, along with their matching socks.

With glee, I ghosted over the carpet, relishing the way the plush sighed underfoot. Father’s study had always been my favorite place: dark, but not gloomy; masculine, but not without comfort.

Over the summer, Father had started bringing Lois in with his tea, and shutting the door behind them, as if Lois were just another item on the tea cart - part of the set. I could hear them having intriguingly muffled conversations through the walls, and would try to satisfy my curiosity by skulking around the door like a stray cat. I had been unable to visit him during these times, as I was perennially rebuffed by my brother Klaus, who liked to stop me by jabbing two fingers into my breastbone and saying, “No further for you.”

“Why not?” I would say.

“Father doesn’t want any children in his study,” Klaus would say.

The last time this happened, I’d thought of something. “He doesn’t?” I’d asked, deliberately widening my eyes in pretend shock.

“No, he doesn’t,” Klaus said. His eyes narrowed.

“That explains why you’re outside listening, then!” I said, breathless at my own bravery. When he flushed bright pink, I knew from experience it was time to run.

Skin prickling with excitement, I drifted around the room, familiarizing myself. Father’s broad, wood panelled desk still sat immovable, a titan, to the left of the door, with a globe resting on the edge. I reached out and spun it with my fingers, remembering when I was six and he pulled me into his lap with the globe before us. He had captured my pudgy fingers with his own huge ones, using them to point out destinations. _This is us,_ he whispered in my ear, _right here. This is Gedonelune. This collection of islands way to the east, this is Hinomoto…_

There was a new chair resting next to Father’s desk chair, though, a swooping, curved chair in the Dante style with a padded cushion. I realized it must be for Louis.

I turned away, resisting the urge to play with the long, draping curtains framing the oversized study window. If I did, Mother would know I had been here.

Instead I walked along the bookshelves, dragging my fingers over the jutting spines of Father’s personal library. Sometimes my finger would drag a little too hard and the book would bounce, a puff of perfumed air rising to my nose, bringing with it the smell of aged paper.  He’d added a few new titles, I thought, but they blended imperceptibly with the old, sharing the same type of binding and heavy covers. I didn’t bother to open any. The magical theory they would contain would be years beyond my level. Klaus, though, might be able to understand. Mother and Father were openly discussing having him skip a year when he enrolled in Gedonelune Magic Academy.

A flash of envy stabbed me in the belly, and suddenly I didn’t want to be in the study anymore. I thought, instead, of how it might be nice to steal a few more canapes from the kitchen and eat them in the comfort of my bedroom. I thought of touching Elaine’s arm and how she might smile as she passed them to me.

It was when I spun on my heel that the mirror caught my eye.

 

* * *

 

The mirror was tall and covered by a velvet cloth, all except for its exposed feet, which were curled, dragon-like, and painted gold.

My curiosity was immediate and consuming. I stole towards the secret object, moving silent, the room around me seeming more hushed and still than ever before. As my fingers brushed the velvet cover, I felt a thrill of pleasure. The magic in this item was unmistakable, vibrating through me like a cat’s purr. With anticipation thick in my throat, I pulled.

The cloth fell away.

The metalwork was fine - much finer than anything my young mind had yet seen. I realized it was not painted gold, but rather was gold, gleaming and rare. The frame was ornate, but somehow did not obstruct the view of the long pane of glass it housed. It was unmistakably my father’s, in the same way that the door was. And like the door, I had no idea what he was thinking when he made it. He took plain things - a thing that you pass through to get from place to place, a thing that you look into to check your appearance - and elevated them, made them strange.

I caught a glimpse of my violet eyes in the mirror. My mother's eyes. Elaine’s eyes, I’d noticed, were brown.

 _"I like Elaine,"_ the mirror said in a voice identical to my own. Then it spoke again, words that would stay with me for all the years afterward.

_"I wish we were sisters."_

Sisters? I blinked, confused, staring into my own face for answers. Something broke loose in my chest. My heart beat wildly and I couldn't tell if I was terrified or elated. I felt very much like a child, then, overhearing something they weren't meant to, but something very important and true. I leaned in.

_"I want her to show me what it means to be a woman. What it's like to have long hair, and how to hold a champagne glass just right in your hands. I want to look like her. I want --"_

The mirror cut itself off because I wasn’t looking anymore; I was crouched with my back to it, hugging my knees into my chest.

Its message rung in my ears and echoed off the walls of my mind. _A woman._ Slowly, I pictured the things my reflection suggested, each image distinct, as if I was picking up cards from a deck and inspecting them. The one about hair lingered the longest, although I didn’t know why. I imagined waking up in the morning with it grown long - feeling the weight of it, draping over my shoulders and spilling down my back. Floating up from bed to find a comb to tame it. A soft cotton gown, whispering around my legs. My face, soft and feminine, framed by all that hair.  

The mirror.

“I'm working on something very special with your brother and Elaine,” Father had said. “A magic tool that makes it impossible to hide. Something that will help people.”

“Is it a magic lantern?” I asked. “I think that would be a great invention. That would make it hard to hide, wouldn’t it? And it would help people find their way.”

“No,” he said, smiling, “but I hope people use it that way.”

 _I understand,_ I thought, and emotion overtook me again. Hot tears seeped from my eyes into my trousers. When I pulled my face away, I could see the blurry strokes my tears had left behind, like a watercolor painting.

I don't know how long I sat there, studying my knees as I wrestled with fear and exhilaration. Eventually I picked myself up, found the velvet cover, and slung it over the mirror. Then I collected my shoes and socks, and without looking back, left the room.

When I shut the door behind me, I failed to notice it had changed.

The scene was from Rapunzel. Her hair was spilling out of the tower window, as she smiled at her waiting lover far below.

 


End file.
